


the earth speaks

by goinghost



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Castle in the Sky Fusion, Magic, Other, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28821432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/pseuds/goinghost
Summary: If you’d told Juno when he woke up that morning that he’d end the day by watching a boy fall from the sky into a mine, he probably would’ve rolled over and gone back to bed. Yeah, he believed in a floating city that lived among the clouds, but there really was only so much supernatural intrigue a lady could take.--A Castle in the Sky AU! No knowledge of Castle in the Sky needed!
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	the earth speaks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [longingineverynote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/longingineverynote/gifts).



> a castle in the sky au for amy! it was a delight watching this movie and deciding how i was gonna write this fic, so much so that i might continue it and write more scenes from the movie as everyone's favorite thief and detective. 
> 
> i tried to make it so that you didn't need to have seen castle in the sky to enjoy this fic! it's p much just the first few beginning scenes of the movie! 
> 
> title is the beginning of a quote from the movie! the full quote is: "The earth speaks to all of us, and if we listen, we can understand." 
> 
> content warning for minor amnesia on nureyev's part but other than that i don't think there's anything!

If you’d told Juno when he woke up that morning that he’d end the day by watching a boy fall from the sky into a mine, he probably would’ve rolled over and gone back to bed. Yeah, he believed in a floating city that lived among the clouds, but there really was only so much supernatural intrigue a lady could take. 

But there he was, chasing after a body descending from the starry night sky. Juno booked it towards the pit where the mine was in the hopes that he’d be able to catch whatever or whoever was falling. He watched the body glow like a star in its own right. 

He made it to the end of a precarious wood platform just as his shitty lungs felt like they were gonna collapse in on themselves. Jesus Christ, he needed to do some cardio or something. Ben used to always try to get him to dance with him, maybe Juno should have taken him up on that offer. 

He stood on the edge of the boards with his arms outstretched as the body—some guy probably around his age—fell into him. He was...light. Not the weight of a person, almost like he was a cloud that had decided he was tired with the drabness of a clear sky. Juno couldn’t imagine ever being tired of living up there. 

Not only was he lighter than a feather, his chest was glowing a bright blue. Juno gaped at him for a millisecond before realizing that it wasn’t the guy’s chest, it was a pendant he was wearing with a strange symbol that Juno had never seen before. Huh, okay, magic pendant then. 

His eyes had just begun to settle on the boy’s face when the blue light cut off and Juno was definitely holding a teenage boy in his arms over a huge mining chasm. 

“Shit!” Juno grunted, feeling his muscles tense trying to keep the boy from falling to his death after he’d miraculously survived a plummet from the sky. The boy’s eyes stayed closed and he didn’t even let out a puff of breath as Juno hauled him fully onto the wooden platform and lay him out where he wouldn’t tip off the side. 

Just his luck, right as he got the boy situated, the familiar voice of Omar Khan called from below, “Steel! Weren’t you supposed to be down here with my dinner?” 

Juno glanced at the thermos of soup he’d dropped in his rush to catch the boy. He cringed, Khan wasn’t gonna like that…

“Yeah, uh, just a minute! Some guy fell from the sky over here.” 

“What? Can’t hear you over the boiler,” Khan yelled, “Just get down here would’ya!” 

Juno glanced at the boy, his features shrouded in the shadow of the night sky. He had inky black hair and a sharp jaw, full lips with pointed canines peaking through as he breathed gently. He looked like the kinda guy who could charm you into playing canary and your song wouldn’t sour even when the mines got to you, because you’d had his attention for that moment. Juno was enamored, struck speechless by the way stars wouldn’t be out of place in the shining dark of this boy’s hair. He wanted to stare at him for ages. 

Then he heard Khan curse loudly as steam whistled from somewhere that couldn’t be good, and he broke out of the trance. Juno shrugged off his trench coat and laid it gently on the boy before hopping down the support structures of the mine with as much grace as he could muster (so, not much). 

He’d figure out what Khan needed and then get the boy out of here. Juno could definitely find some place to put him, and hopefully he’d be awake enough in the morning to provide some  _ answers _ , because Juno had a whole lot of questions. 

* * *

Nureyev woke with a start, his hand clutching the dirt and trying to determine how many of his limbs were broken. 

Except...he wasn’t clutching dirt. He wasn’t even outside. He was on a bed? And, if his initial assessment was to be believed, nothing was broken or even in pain. He felt genuinely well rested for perhaps the first time in weeks. And he had no idea how. 

He remembered the airship, which he’d spent almost the entire time he’d been on it attempting to find a way  _ off  _ that didn’t involve jumping off the side (too late for that, he supposed). But after that everything in his mind went dark. Yet, somehow, he’d survived and made it here. Wherever  _ here  _ was. 

There was movement coming from outside, on the roof. Nureyev stood on shaky legs and started climbing a wooden ladder that led up. He arrived just in time to see a lady being mobbed by...were those rabbits? How did they even get up to the roof? 

“Hey, whoa, hey,” the other boy said, holding out fistfuls of food for the creatures. “One at a time, guys.” 

Nureyev didn’t want to interrupt, but he would very much like some answers as to why he was there in the first place, so he cleared his throat and tapped a finger to the shingles. 

“Oh! You woke up. That’s great because I wasn’t sure if you would, to be honest. Don’t get a lot of people magically falling from the sky around these parts.” The lady said, shooing away the rabbits surrounding him and coming to stand next to where Nureyev was perched. “I’m Juno, by the way, Juno Steel. What the hell happened to you last night?” 

Nureyev glanced down, shaking his head slightly, and said, “I don’t—I’m not quite sure. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember much. I was on an airship, and then I was no longer on the airship, and then I woke up here.” He binked suddenly. Oh, he hadn’t given Juno a name, hm. What name to give him… Nureyev had no qualms that he was important in the grand scheme of things, but father had always told him to keep his name close, that it had some kind of special meaning. He rarely met anyone else working on the farm, but when he did he’d taken to introducing himself with a new fake name every time. 

“I’m Peter Ransom,” he finally settled on. 

“Well, Ransom, you seem like a normal enough person.” Juno said, eyeing him. “When I saw you floating down I thought you were a falling star or something.” 

Nureyev tilted his head. What?

“Floating down…? What do you mean?” He asked. 

Juno considered him for a moment before making a gesture with his hand, as if he wanted Nureyev to hand him something. 

“Here,” he said, “I’ll show you, gimme your necklace for a minute.”

Nureyev’s hand came to rest on the pendant he’d gotten from his father, one he’d promised never to let go off. It was a blue stone with a strange symbol inlaid in it, but Nureyev didn’t need to know what the symbol meant to understand that it held power. And here Juno was just asking him to hand it over. 

Except, Juno only needed it for a moment, and he  _ had  _ somehow saved Nureyev’s life. Nureyev couldn’t pretend like he wasn’t infinitely curious about the circumstances surrounding that. 

“Alright,” he said after a few seconds of silence. He unclasped the pendant and handed it delicately to Juno, who took it and worked to clasp it behind his neck. 

Nureyev watched as he struggled, and came up behind him to clasp it himself. Juno stilled as Nureyev’s hands came to hover behind his back, but he breathed out a soft, “Thanks,” when Nureyev finished putting on the necklace for him. 

Without further preamble, Juno suddenly ran to the edge of the roof they were standing on and leapt off the side of the hut. Nureyev gasped and immediately raced to the lip of shingles when he heard a loud crash that must’ve been Juno landing unpleasantly. He was not wanting for nimbleness and so he stretched his limbs and climbed down to where Juno had landed in some kind of storage room. 

“Juno, are you quite alright?” 

Juno’s voice was rough when he replied, “Yeah, just—uh, really misinterpreted what this thing can do.” He grunted as he shifted himself into a standing position. “It was glowing when you fell. I thought it was making you light as air, but I guess I was wrong. Or maybe it only works for you? Or in situations where you’re in actual danger.” He scratched at his face lightly, “Hmm, we’d have to find a way to test it without actually shoving you into danger, but—”

“Well I think that’s quite enough excitement for one morning,” Nureyev interrupted. He wasn’t sure he was liking where Juno’s train of thought was going. “Might I have some breakfast? Floating to one’s almost-guaranteed death is awfully tiring.” 

“Right, yeah, we’ll come back to the necklace thing,” Juno said with a considering grin, handing the pendant back to Nureyev, who took it with a grateful sigh. 

He led Nureyev through the brick hut until they were in a large workshop area. On one wall was a workbench with tools strung up and about, as well as some photographs hanging from the wall. Taking up the majority of space was the frame of a large winged machine. Nureyev couldn’t help but tap a finger to the structure and marvel at how impressive it looked, even not fully finished. 

Juno gestured to a sink by the workbench that he could wash up at and he made his way over to it. He was distracted, however, by one of the photographs. It appeared to be something of an island floating in a huge bank of clouds, barely visible yet still distinct. Under the photograph was a label that read **_BRAHMA_** in black lettering. 

Sink forgotten, Nureyev ran his fingers across the letters like they might hold more answers than they appeared to. 

“What’s this?” He asked. 

Juno poked his head back into the room and glanced at what he was looking at. He said, “Oh, that’s a picture of Brahma, it’s a massive floating city. My brother got a good look at it once, he’s the one who took the picture.” 

“Where is it now?” 

Juno’s dark eyes turned stormy, his expression clouding over. 

“No one knows,” he said, “My brother spent a long time trying to find more information about it. He had a journal he kept with what he thought the people and buildings and all that could look like. Even thought there was a castle filled with treasure somewhere up there. No one believed him.” 

“Your brother...has he been to the city before? Could I speak to him?” 

Juno laughed sardonically, a response Nureyev didn’t understand until he replied, “Yeah, fat chance of that, Ransom. My brother’s been dead for two years.”

Nureyev didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t think there was anything he could say. Still, he wanted to try. 

“Juno…” However as soon as the word left his lips, he glanced through the window to see a car of people that looked awfully familiar pull up outside of Juno’s house. Then he realized why they looked so familiar. The pirates from his struggles last night! They were here, somehow, having tracked him down. He needed to get away very quickly. 

“Juno,” Nureyev repeated, expelling the gentleness from his tone, “Those are the people who attacked the airship I was on last night. I can’t let them see me here.” 

Juno startled out of his stupor and glanced at the pirates through the window. He looked around the hut before his eyes settled on a coat rack in the corner. 

“I’ve got an idea…” He said as a small grin returned to his face. “What size trench coat do you wear?”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! 
> 
> if you'd like something like this, check out my pinned tweet on [my twitter](https://twitter.com/GHOSTZVNE)
> 
> comments and kudos always make me eternally happy so feel free to leave some if you enjoyed it or if you might want more of this au in the future!


End file.
